From Joanne A. Schneider
Dawn Mountain Tibetan Temple, Community Center, and Research Institute
Houston, TX
Dear Norman, Norm, Lynn, Kay, Kristi S., Kristi N., Katiyana, and Kimberly,
I would like to thank you from the deepest part of my heart for the revelations you unveiled to me at the Lenz SOMI Conference.
While I participated in almost all of the webinars, this was my first conference. I have returned home from this transformational experience viewing fundraising in an astonishing new way – that there are no “askers” and “donors,” only partners sharing a passion for my organization who will participate in its development in ways that match their respective circumstances. Of course, Lynn’s Soul of Money philosophy of giving from the heart provided the wisdom that framed everything we heard and did. The five K’s provided their own juicy nuggets of wisdom that will maintain their freshness over time. And the two Normans demonstrated deep wisdom in speculating that the Lenz funds invested in SOMI training – rather than funding some short-term initiative at each of our organizations – would provide us with tools for self-sufficiency yielding a much more significant payback into the future. In particular, I thank them for their vision and the risk they assumed in funding this 18-month journey that has yielded deep insights, inspiration, motivation, and, I do believe, future life cycle benefits.
There were several major insights that I gained from the collective wisdom the SOMI “posse” had to impart. One is the centrality of one’s organization’s values running like strong threads through the fabric composing its infrastructure – vision, mission, strategic plan programs, and leadership. And that they also must be reflected in a parallel structure for fundraising. The second was the educational, shared context of fundraising from the heart for social profits/prophets that gives others opportunities to be vested in an improved future. And the third is the emergence of a powerful network of participants, not just of individuals but organizations, that can keep mentoring each other in our respective strengths in on-going collaboration – a non-competitive learning community! There were many more things I could list as well. For example, I think the Benevon Program is an incredibly powerful tool for cultivating and maintaining partners that we will be putting in place this fall. Kristi Scarpone was immensely helpful to us in working out the questions we brought with us and allowed us to see how we can move forward with implementing it now. And, Katiyana patiently recorded on an iPhone several videos for my Dawn Mountain team which convinced me to upgrade my first generation iPad to an iPad 2 with HD video.
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Hi Anne, I could not have said it better and completely agree. My e-mail address is dburch@earthlink.net — let’s stay in touch!